Erin told him how Jenette’s misfortune had driven home to her that she would never be able to protect anyone, with a badge or without one. “It was a climactic event for me. It forced me to accept that I’d gone into my profession for all the wrong reasons. And right before I decided to throw in the towel, I was so disgusted by that kid and so angry with him that I had violent thoughts. A good cop handles his emotions better than that.”

“Don’t you mean ‘handles her emotions’?” He pushed aside a pile of paperwork to rest his arms on the desk. “There are a lot of really great female cops.”

“I’m not one of them. I excelled at everything I was expected to learn. I think I’ve done reasonably well at the job. But it was never my dream. But you know that already.”

“Yes, but I wonder if you really know that. You say the words. At some level, you’re cognizant of the fact that your father pushed you into being a cop. But judging by what I see, you’re very upset for someone who realized she made a mistake and finally rectified it.”

“The moment I put my badge on Adams’s desk, I felt like such a failure. I worked so hard to become a good cop. And there I stood, throwing away my dream.”

“But you just said it was never your dream. It was your father’s dream for you. I worry there’s a part of you that doesn’t see that.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Remember the basket. How it’s made from dozens of fibers and will start to fall apart if we remove any of them? That’s you, Erin. And one of your fibers is entitled Deputy. You’ve jerked out an element that was part of who you are.”

Erin thought about how frantic she’d been feeling over the last few days. “Oh, God, you’re right. Now I’m not sure who or what I am. So it’s all-important to establish myself as something else, someone else.”

“A rancher,” Jonas summarized for her.

“And that’s going wonderfully well. I work too hard. I work too fast. I forget all the absurd safety rules. In short, according to my uncle and his foreman, I’m a liability.”

Jonas merely smiled in his usual, unruffled way. “Keep going. You’re on a roll. Do you really want to be a rancher? It’s a lot of hard work.”

“Not if you work smarter instead of harder,” Erin retorted with a sneer. “Or so I’ve been told at least a dozen times.”

Jonas linked his fingers behind his head, looking as relaxed as a man could get. “There’s actually something to that saying. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but I grew up on a ranch. Not a huge one like Wilder’s, but my father owns a large chunk of land. We kids all had daily chores, and my mother often worked at my dad’s side. She may not have created that saying, but I sure did see her invent ways to work smarter.” His eyes twinkled with humor. “One time when she had to feed animals when there were no hay bales out by the fence, she hauled them out on an old Radio Flyer red wagon. It took her a while, but she got the job done.”